“My time at ERNI was… full”

James D. Shepperd, Content Strategy PR, ESET

How was your time at ERNI? What did you learn/gain there?

Even before I officially started I was offered resources to prepare for my entry into the world of Software Engineering. This included Q&A sessions with marketing staff, engineers and business consultants. All of it was there to benefit me.
ERNI’s goal in bringing me in was to support the company’s ongoing push toward opening more global offices and the multicultural teams that would staff them. They, explained that they liked my writing sample, my communications proposal, and surprisingly… my academic background in Anthropology.
From day 1, that proved to be true. Based in Bratislava, I communicated with colleagues from Switzerland, Spain and the Philippines right away. ERNI was true to all the promises made during my interview, training and onboarding process.

About 3 months on the job I really felt like… “Wow, I am the Corporate Communications Manager”. It was a leap of faith and it worked out. Very early on I interacted with the CEO, the owner, Business Unit Leaders and Service (software) Unit Leaders. It was a big responsibility. However, I was supported by an excellent manager… and knew that between him and the rest of the team, I wouldn’t fail. This support gave me the confidence to execute many new (to me) business process.

Did the experiences you got at ERNI help you at the next positions after you left ERNI?

Collaboration is central to ERNI, while everyone brings something a bit different to projects, you both need and get to see the big picture. You can really see how ERNI’s engineering DNA rubs off on marketing processes for example.
One huge takeaway was this mantra we used to quality check our processes: Are we delivering on quality, pace, and scale?

At ERNI I held the position of Corporate Communications Manager. My role was to improve quality, pace, and scale of communications at ERNI. This was primarily focused on the production of Connection and Emotion magazines, the administration (quality gate) of SharePoint communications, copywriting, copyediting, Social Media and support for marketing campaigns and website builds.

At ESET (Cybersecurity) – I hold the position of PR Content Strategist.